ALBANY COUNTY — With 36 Albany County legislators pulling off one hell of a Brady Bunch impression on Monday, all of them voted to approve a pandemic-pared-down $719.3 million budget for 2021. 

Thirty-two of 35 lawmakers in December of last year voted to adopt the county executive’s budget for this year, while the December before that, 38 of 39 approved Daniel McCoy’s proposed budget for 2019. There are 39 county legislators, nine Republicans and 30 Democrats.

On Wednesday, McCoy, pushing for federal stimulus money, said at a press conference he had to borrow $40 million, take $8 million out of reserves, and offer 72 county workers incentives to retire early.

“I planned for a rainy day,” he said of managing county finances.

The $719.3 million spending plan for next year is down significantly from this year’s adjusted budget, which is now set to be $747.3 million — up about $14 million from what was originally proposed around this time last year.

Dave Reilly, the deputy commissioner of management and budget, told The Enterprise, that, as the year evolves, so does the budget, and amendments are very often made — like grant opportunities are announced or new funding sources are made available, he said.

But those proposed amendments have to be balanced before they go before the legislature; there needs to be a revenue source to balance the appropriation, Reilly said. “So it’s a constantly evolving document; it’s not any one that thing that jumps up.” The majority of budget amendments, he said, come through grant-funding opportunities.

Nicole Antonucci, the director of communications for the majority conference in the county legislature, told The Enterprise by email that, when McCoy first submitted his proposed budget for 2021, on Oct. 13, the adjusted budget for 2020 was $747.3 million.

“But the figure is a rolling one that will not be fully realized until the end of the current budget year due to continuous adjustments which are occurring month to month. So, $747.3 million may or may not represent the actual Adjusted Budget Amount for 2020,” Antonucci wrote.

At $97.5 million, the county is under the state-set levy limit for the eighth year in a row, while giving property owners a tax-rate decrease for the third year in a row, imperceptible as it might be. The county tax rate in 2021 is set to be $3.487 per $1,000 of equalized value, down from $3.49 per $1,000 this year.

The county legislature also added $170,000 and two new Department of Mental Health social-worker positions for a new program called ACCORD, which stands for Albany County Crisis Officials Responding and Diverting.

The new program will “change the way dispatch services are delivered in instances of non-violent calls for assistance,” according to a release from the legislature.

Response teams made up of social workers from the county’s Mobile Crisis Team joined with Emergency Medical Technicians from the Albany County Sheriff’s Office will respond to 9-1-1 calls when “law enforcement is not paramount and a situation may be more appropriately handled by mental health professionals and/or paramedics,” according to the release announcing the creation of the program. “These unarmed responders would be dispatched by the Albany County Sheriff’s Office. Instances including non-violent mental illness and addiction may trigger the dispatch of the ACCORD.”

There are no cuts in either services or programs in the county’s 2021 budget, according to a release from the county legislature. “Expected revenues from sales tax and mortgage recording tax collections are forecasted to offset all spending increases made in the final budget.”

Revenues

In 2021, the legislature expects the county to take in about $272.3 million in sales-tax revenue, which is about 6 percent less than the $290.4-million figure that was used to build this year’s budget. 

McCoy had originally planned for $272 million in sales tax for next year, but the legislature added another $300,000 in expected revenue during the budget process — it also added another $300,000 to what it expects the county to receive in mortgage recording fees in 2021, now $4.3 million. 

Sales-tax collections for the first 10 months of this year are down about 8.3 percent compared to the same period last year, according to the state comptroller’s office; the county took in approximately $215.1 million in sales-tax revenue between January and October, down from $234.5 million in 2019.

With the exception of an expected almost $3 million hit from the hotel-motel tax, the county expects the revenue it derives from other local tax items to be flat to OK in 2021.

Those items include payments in lieu of taxes, known as PILOTs; income from the sale of tax-acquired properties; interest and penalties on delinquent taxes; the county’s portion of the hotel-motel tax; revenue from the mortgage-recording fees; and other non-property taxes — from about $22.4 million this year to $19.2 million in 2021. 

About $96.6 million is expected from the state, up from $91 million this year, and $77.8 million is anticipated from the federal government, an increase of $1.8 million from 2020.

The county expects to levy about $97.5 million in property taxes in 2021, up from $95.4 million this year.

The county is expecting to receive about $43.2 million from department and miscellaneous income in 2021, which includes fees charged by the county clerk, public-health fees, civic-center revenues, fees charged to other governments for boarding prisoners at the county jail, and income collected by the county nursing home for residential care.

The expected department and miscellaneous income for next year is down nearly $13 million from the $55 million expected to be collected in 2020.

To present a balanced spending plan for 2021, McCoy’s budget relied on tapping the county’s $60 million rainy-day fund for $3 million, reallocating $5 million that would have otherwise been appropriated toward paying off county debt, and $5 million in salaries and benefits savings from 72 employees who each accepted a $15,000 early-separation payout to either retire or leave the county employ — it cost the county more than $1 million in up-front costs to get those employees off its books. 

In response to the pandemic’s looming financial impact, McCoy told The Enterprise in October, the county slowed down hiring. 

Appropriations

Among the largest appropriations in the budget are:

— Economic assistance and opportunity, including social services, medical assistance, and children and family services, $243.9 million;

— General government operations, $176.5 million;

— Public safety, including the sheriff’s office, county jail, and probation office, $90.9 million; 

— Health and mental-health services, $44.2 million; and

— Education, $32.7 million. ​